wine delirium, spectral fog and other strange dances from the stinking shack of Chocolate Monk

Saturday, 24 November 2012

Junk Operatic For John Cage

In November I was asked by The Wire magazine to curate a night inspired by John Cage as part of their 'Cage Rattling' event. My idea behind the evening was to show how Cage had an influence on non-musicians/noisicians. My own exposure to Cage in the early 1990s led onto discovering David Tudor, Gordon Mumma, MEV etc (all artists later bootlegged by Stomach Ache Records, a fine example of how this 'high brow' music was starting to give the Noise scene the horn, all pre-internet/Ubuweb/blogs/etc). Cageian crud first manifested itself in my sound in what Prick Decay called our Junk Operatics. This was basically the random layering of sounds, usually on our old four track tape player. We(myself and Lisa)would record on tracks independent of each other (without listening to previous tracks), and/or add random sections of live shows, field recordings etc, usually using the rolling of dice, our own crude form of I-Ching. So as well as having a night of live acts (Duncan Harrison & Jo Henderson, Bolide, Four Manatees, Hobo Sonn & HereHareHere, Ali Roberston, Lizzy Carey, The Bohman Brothers and myself with Phil Minton/Sharon Gal/Fiona Kennedy/Luke Poot) I also wanted to present a 'Junk Operatic' for the occasion, I decided to invite 5 artists I admire and whom I know have been influenced by Cage to submit to me a 7 minute piece (or thereabouts) inspired by Cage which i then proceeded to overlay atop one another. there was no editing, I just let the tracks do their own thing together. Many thanks to Seymour Glass, Doglady, T.Mikawa, I'DM Thfftable and Gen Ken Montgomery for contributing the tracks.